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Tuesday, December 24, 2013

Op-Ed: Is singling out Israel for boycotts anti-Semitic?

A paradigmatic characteristic of all bigotry is to take a fault that is widespread among all cultures, races, religions and nationalities and to attribute it singularly to one group.

For example: “Blacks are violent.” “Jews are cheap.” “Asians are sly.” “Gays are pedophiles.” “Women are irrational.” “Romanies (gypsies) cheat.”

The truth, of course, is that all groups have some among them with these negative characteristics.

The bigots who make these claims correctly point to the fact that some members of these groups display the negative characteristics attributed to the groups as a whole.

But the bigotry consists of singling out any such group for unique condemnation on the basis of these widespread faults without acknowledging that members of other groups have them as well, sometimes in greater proportion than the group that is singled out.